


Birthdays, Nicknames, and other might-have-beens

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Disabled Character, Episode: s05e10 Abandon All Hope..., Everybody Lives, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Jo Lives, Lesbian Character, POV Female Character, POV Jo, Schmoop, just this once everybody lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU for 5x10 "Abandon All Hope." Jo and Ellen live. </p><p>Checking in with Jo Harvelle: three birthdays over the next ten years. Set a few months after she //almost// died in season five, then just after the finale of season nine, then five years in the future because <i>god dammit I want these characters to have a happy ending</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthdays, Nicknames, and other might-have-beens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likewinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/gifts).



Jo Harvelle turns twenty-five on a cold, windy, nondescript day. They’re in the middle of a long and frustrating search through a stack of dead hunters’ journals, looking for something — anything — to help them get a leg up against Lucifer. She wouldn’t even have remembered the day except that her mom calls, of course she does, and she and Bobby sing _Happy Birthday_ loud and off-key over the phone. They sing it loud enough that Sam and Dean can hear and she flushes red and doesn’t look at them until after she hangs up. 

Sam is grinning at her, delighted and amused and saying maybe they should take the night off, _well, okay, not the_ whole _night off but come on, at least one beer and maybe something better than Gas N Sip buffet for dinner,_ but it’s Dean, the way his eyes crinkle around the edges and he’s not really smiling, just looking at her, that makes everything she’s been ignoring/repressing/not-thinking-about bubble up to the surface. But instead of triggering a panic attack or sending phantom pains shooting down her phantom legs, Dean’s not-quite-smile sparks a warm flutter in her belly, a faint echo of how she used to feel when he walked into the room, when he looked at her. Her lips twist into the closest thing to a smile they’ve attempted in months, and she cocks her head up at him. Sam either notices or is just that intent on getting the birthday beers because he leaves the room, still talking to himself, and when they’re alone Dean kneels in front of her chair and folds her into his arms, one steady hand cradling the back of her head as she sniffs against his shoulder.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” he murmurs into her ear, and she she snorts, letting him know what she thinks of _that_ particular nickname. He pulls back and now he really is smiling, gazing at her with his palm against her cheek, and she thinks, she almost didn’t make it to this birthday. She might not make it to the next. Hell, none of them are probably gonna get much older at the rate they’re going. But she did. She made it this far. And maybe, she admits, _maybe there’s something to celebrate after all._

x0x

She turns thirty on a beach down in Florida. She and Jody Mills had tracked a crocotta through the Everglades and after wasting it, Jody suggested they celebrate. The ex-sheriff had a nose for these things, apparently, and the two of them end up crashing a spring break beach party with plenty of beer and marshmallows to go around. It’s too much to ask, of course, that this is just a normal bunch of horny college students, and when Jody gets caught up in talking to the pair of them who’d seen the bloody evidence of the crocotta’s killing spree, Jo edges away from the group to sit on a log and watch the waves roll in.

She’s exhausted and shaky and she’s having one of those days where her legs don’t feel like they’re quite part of her body. And to be fair, they’re really not. She hasn’t even had them back for a year yet and despite what Dean had always said about the guy, Jo’s not entirely convinced Castiel had his head — or his grace — on straight when he healed her. Rebuilt her, really. She’d spent almost five years as a double amputee after those hell bitches got their teeth into her back in Missouri, and yeah obviously she’s not pining for those years or anything — for one thing it’s awesome to be able to hunt on her own again and for another sex is so much easier— but she’d gotten used to it; she’d gotten by. Her mind is sharper for those years she spent on research duty. And especially since they found the bunker, and Charlie rebooted the systems and taught her how to use them. The team they’d made, _Dean and Sam and friends_ with her at the control booth. They’d gotten by, all right.

But even so she’s never quite counted on birthdays. In their line of work they’re not exactly a guarantee, so they tend to sneak up on her, take her by surprise. Not to mention make her feel guilty for getting this far when others haven’t been so lucky. And as she digs her bare feet into the warm sand, Jo shakes her head to think that here she is, still alive, walking again, and of all places spending her thirtieth birthday on a goddamn beach surrounded by the kind of people she didn’t like even when she was their age. Which feels like forever ago. The ocean is relentless, like some huge, ageless giant breathing steadily in and out and utterly unconcerned with her tiny existence. She matches her breaths to the waves and suddenly feels very alone.

Her phone beeps an incoming text and she jumps; she didn’t think she’d have signal out here. She pulls it out and reads the message from an unknown number.

_Happy birthday, Batgirl._

The nickname conjures bright eyes and tanned skin and freckles as numerous as the grains of sand beneath her feet and Jo closes her eyes, breathing quick and shallow for a few long minutes before she can reply.

_Thanks, Sam. Missing you both right now._

Five minutes. Ten. She doesn’t think he’s going to answer, until he does.

_Me, too._

x0x

She turns thirty-five behind the counter of _Harvelles II_. She’s got a phone clamped between her ear and her shoulder, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a baby — not hers, thank God, he was cute and all but _Christ_ he was heavy and needed something, like, constantly — on her hip. Garth won’t stop arguing with her over the signs of a lamia versus a werewolf and she’s about to really start yelling at him when the door creaks open and two big, familiar shadows fill the doorway and she just hangs up on him instead. 

“Hey, boys,” she grins at them, pours two drinks, and hands the baby across the bar to Sam as soon as he gets close enough. “How’d it go?”

“Good,” Sam says, grinning at her, then at a look from Dean he amends with a shrug, “well, mostly good. You know. Anyway, it was a whole nest of ‘em, just like you said.” He sits and bounces the baby on his knee, cooing down at him. “But somebody’s mommy got a little over-excited with the flame thrower, mm-hmm.”

Jo lifts her eyebrows and looks to Dean. “Do I want to know?”

Dean laughs. “Well, uh,” he glances over his shoulder. “Just don’t ask her to take off her hat for a few weeks. Or maybe years.”

The door opens again and two smaller figures push through, bickering with each other. Dorothy looks thunderous and Charlie has a heavy wool cap pulled down over her ears and bandages wrapped around both hands that she lifts in defeat as she spins to face her wife. “Okay, fine, I’m an idiot, are we done or do I need to remind you that you once took on two dozen flying monkeys with a pocketknife and a six-shooter. _By yourself._ ”

Jo bites her lips and looks between Sam and Dean, who are carefully not looking at each other, trying not to laugh. The baby, seeing his moms, squeals and flaps his hands, effectively ending the argument. Jo pours drinks all around and hollers to Krissy to bring up another crate of Jack and some more pretzels. When the girl emerges from the storeroom, though, she’s carrying a cake and wearing an impish grin. 

The entire bar joins in when Sam and Dean start singing and she doesn’t have a hope in the world of staying dry-eyed when she opens the small package Dean hands over. The frame is new but the picture is old, worn, and a little charred along one edge. None of them look their best but they’re all there, alive, and Jo thinks it’s Dean’s handwriting scrawled across the bottom. _That one time we saved the world, again._ She looks at him and he shrugs, smiles as she props it up behind the bar so her mom and Bobby and Castiel can look down on them, look down on a birthday party the likelihood of her celebrating, if you’d asked a decade ago, would’ve been a bad bet.

“So,” Dean says, leaning towards her, eyes twinkling.

“So,” she says, resting her elbows on the counter.

“If this was our last night on Earth…”

She laughs out loud and wipes her eyes, then lifts herself up on her toes to reach for him across the bar. With her hand on his cheek she presses a quick kiss to his lips and then ruffles up his hair. “Thank goodness it’s not, huh?”

She chucks him on the shoulder and he winks, offers her the first slice of cake. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Theme=Happy Endings. Prompt: Supernatural, Jo/+any or gen, in another life she made it past twenty-five.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/541311.html?thread=76948351#t76948351)


End file.
